As the NFL season draws closer, consumers can expect to see several new media personalities encompass coverage across different networks and digital platforms. FOX Sports has added Tom Brady to its lead NFL broadcasting booth, working alongside play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt and sideline reporters Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi. Brady, a seven-time Super Bowl champion, won the first six of those titles alongside head coach Bill Belichick, who will appear on editions of Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli on ESPN2. Additionally, Belichick is going to make weekly appearances on both The Pat McAfee Show and Inside the NFL, along with co-producing and hosting a new show with Underdog Fantasy.
In recent years, several former New England Patriots have been part of the sports media industry, including Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman with FOX Sports, Randy Moss and Damien Woody with ESPN and Rodney Harrison with NBC Sports. During the latest edition of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz, producer Mike Ryan remarked on how he is incredulous towards the football world arriving to this part of the timeline. When he was growing up, many former Pittsburgh Steelers players were on the air, which began to turn towards the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s.
The conversation surrounding the topic initially started with Ryan mentioning a recent opinion divulged by Andrew Perloff of Infinity Sports Network as to the trust viewers will be able to have in Belichick. As a coach who had a reputation for being difficult with members of the media, Perloff conjectured that it is strange that Belichick is suddenly involved in a plethora of media ventures.
This led Perloff to begin questioning Belichick’s agenda after he was unable to land a head coaching job during the offseason. After Jon “Stugotz” Weiner explained that he could trust Belichick and was excited to have a coach with his résumé join the media space, Dan Le Batard said it is reflective of the changing nature of the industry.
“There’s never been somebody who gets all the broadcasting jobs and gets to lord over with giant voice your every Sunday because he’s in so many places, and anyone he criticizes is going to get aggregated and feed the media machine on a job,” Le Batard said. “You saw how JJ Redick used it – you can just dump a media career. ‘No, I want to go do this.’ Are you kidding me?”
Ryan conveyed that Redick was critical on many occasions while he was appearing on ESPN broadcasts and studio programming, along with hosting podcasts with his ThreeFourTwo Productions vertical. Redick is now the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers and stated during his introductory press conference that he has been “excommunicated” from the content space. The salient point surrounding everything going on with Belichick was whether or not he would meet the purported expectations fans have in hearing him on a weekly basis.
“Do we think a dude that wasn’t media friendly at all will give us what we’re hoping for because Omaha’s tapped into this?” Ryan said. “It’s why I’m super excited to have Tom Brady’s live thoughts as a game is happening because I’ve never had someone that great tell me what’s happening. I’ve never had a coach this great weigh in week to week with five weekly appearances. Are you going to give me what I want, which is honesty?”
Le Batard examined the issue by analyzing former athletes who have made an impact in the media space, some of whom include JJ Redick, Pat McAfee, Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. None of them, he asserted, have the same level of pedigree as Peyton Manning or Tom Brady, specifically pointing to a nine-year content agreement between ESPN and Omaha Productions that extends the partnership between the two companies through 2034. Brady and Belichick, Le Batard presumes, want to be involved in the kind of original content that Manning is doing with his own independent company.
“They want to be the ones who are the power brokers of, not necessarily making all of the content, but Belichick is going to have his voice remain in the game, even though no one would give him the power to run a franchise,” Le Batard said. “He’s going to remain relevant this season with whatever he’s doing with media work that isn’t to lose at this game; he’s playing where he is going to control power and narrative through the media space to be able to see if he can get one of these good positions because he’s not going to end his career [this] way.”
Brady and Belichick are both “giant economies” themselves, Le Batard divulged, leading producer Billy Gill to explain that Belichick is not doing the same thing as Brady and Manning. Weiner added that he perceives Brady to be “all in” on the media space, whereas Belichick is simply renting and trying to remain relevant until landing another head coaching job. Belichick is currently 14 victories away from holding the distinction as the winningest NFL head coach of all time.
“Noise around Belichick, whether it’s Deflategate or not, anything around Belichick in terms of noise that keeps his name every week with us talking about it,” Le Batard said. “The idea that the giants have arrived at the media game, Stugotz, and the amount of work Belichick’s taking on – the amount he’s taking on – he’s going to be everywhere.”
